Abstract

The connection between Adorno’s music aesthetics and his conception of a negative dialectic lies in the dark, not least because Adorno’s implicitly dialectical mode of argumentation cannot usually be precisely grasped and adequately located. Against this background, this article does not aim to apply a preconceived notion of dialectics to Adorno’s music-aesthetic writings, but rather to develop one on the other. With a view to the three-step ›constellation – insertion of meaning (»Sinn-Einlegen«) – dialectical image‹, Adorno’s statements on Beethoven, Wagner, and Mahler are subjected to a re-reading.